St. John's Hall, Room 111A
Department of Physics and St. John’s
Society of Physics Students Chapter Seminar
A Quest for Exotic Nano-Structures with
Superior Optical Properties
Daniel Nikolov
Department of Physics, St. John’s University
The presentation discusses the recent research done on nano-wires
with superior optical properties. The goal of the study is to
discover and build structures which can transmit light below the
diffraction limit, hence achieving good confinement while
maintaining large propagation length. The research done shows that
it is possible to achieve more than 40% transmission trough
cylindrical wires of 40nm diameter if appropriate materials are
used. The enhanced light transmission is due to the excitement
of Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) at the metal dielectric
interfaces. Furthermore, an analytical model is built to explain
the coupling of multiple nanowaveguides using properties of SPPs.
More recent work, shows that it is possible to modify the
properties of the waveguide by adding additional dielectric core
creating a coaxial wire. A better confinement can be achieved at
the cost of shorter propagation length and lower transmission. The
application of such structures are numerous including near-field
microscopy, single molecule spectroscopy and near-field
lithography.
All students and faculty are invited. Refreshments will be
served.